Understanding zoonotic disease risk using dynamic ecological models

The natural world is expected to undergo a significant transformation over the next century, driven by climate change, habitat destruction, human population increases and greater globalisation. Many animal-borne or zoonotic human diseases (e.g. Ebola, Plague, Anthrax) are caught from non-domesticated, wild species and these host species will likely alter their spatial distribution and behaviour in response to environmental change. To examine how this process will impact human zoonotic diseases, I will first create a dynamic, species distribution model that incorporates the latest, fine-scale remote-sensed data, to predict the real-time environmental suitability for disease-carrying host species. On these suitability surfaces, I will run mechanistic models of host species population dynamics, which I can use to assess the role of seasonal and annual changes to the environment and to better predict host abundance and, subsequently, host-human contact rates. I will then create two environmentally-responsive movement networks, the first consisting of major animal migrations and the second of human transportation methods, which I can then apply to historical and future environments to model zoonotic disease spread and animal invasions. I will then integrate these major work threads into a global, dynamic, 'whole systems' modelling framework of zoonotic diseases, containing both a dynamic ecological model component and a previously developed, empirically-based model of human population density, poverty and behaviour. This framework, when validated against empirical animal occurrence and disease case data, will be allowed to run on a set of high priority zoonoses in Africa to test policy interventions in present day conditions and then test how different drivers of expected future global change will impact the efficacy of these interventions.